Rising up

I never realized how much a douche bag I must sound like blogging about how I am learning all this crap about investing until I read some other university punks opinions.

You know the kids. The kids that live to work. the kids that march to the beat of the corporate drum. Fuck them.

In other news I passed exam one of the CFA program and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. Booyah.

Psych Out

I'm all about learning the psychology behind whatever it is I am up to.

I didn't understand what people were thinking shorting the financials in the teens. I didn't understand what they were thinking shorting ANYTHING that had gone down 50-80% or more. It didn't seem like there was much reward left and too much risk.

Now I get it. It's the same now except reversed. I'm comfortable buying stocks that have doubled and tripled off of their bottoms because I'm comfortable with the Value that's left in their equity.

Moral of the story: risk and reward are silly to quantify sometimes.

Let It Be Known

You know, most good investors, especially the trading type, they either wince or laugh hysterically at you when you mention the words "double down". Well I've been doing that for quite some time now, and today is the day that I'm back to that psychological barrier: Even.

That's right, I'm back in the black. That might not sound like a feat to you but let me insist, It Is. I was buying all kinds of ridiculous trash in '08: Citi at 26, Media stocks that went to 0, Double long financials (UYG), Bank of America at 14.

I lost my shirt, shoes, and pants on all of those at one point. What did I do? I bought more. Just like a broken clock is right twice a day, even Bill Miller is right twice a decade.

It's not about how often you win, but about how much you win when you do.

Buy

Continue to buy with whatever money you have, find, or borrow.

This is my strategy and I'm sticking to it. See folks, consistency is key. The only sure-fire way for myself to lose money right now would be to stop buying. The market and the economy have shown that the worst is over for now, from an overall perspective.

I bought some natural gas in TSE:GAS recently. I am looking at adding to my small-cap value plays that are a little lagging. I am small money thus I use small money advantages.

If you are big money, what the hell are you listening to me for?

Clarity

Maybe I should be a little more clear with my intentions.

For the time being I'm not concerned with how much money I make or lose. It's not about an amount. It's about an ability. It's about the ability to grow money.

I want to be able to lose everything and make it back. The ability to create a fortune, to me, is preferable to having one.

Character

"Character is what you do when no one is looking"
- Jackson Browne

I don't know who Mr. Browne is but I must agree. I'm a strong proponent of doing some things "just because" sometimes. For example, when I was a child I would never walk down the hallways of the apartment building, that didn't make sense to me. Why walk when you can run? So I ran unless someone was watching, you know, because I didn't want Them to know I was crazy.

A couple others: I like to hold doors for people and I like to hand out fashion complements (although the value of which, coming from me, is subjective). I don't have to do these things and in all reality I'm not going to get anything in return; I do them just because.

This is relevant because it applies directly to success. Reading annual reports, building and playing with financial and statistical models, reading and thinking about financial information... you get the idea. I think that if you can put these into your character through desire and effort, you have a much higher probability of getting whatever it is that you want. Hell, rumour has it, if you do it well enough you'll wind up with more than you wanted.